I wrote an update of upcoming Mars landers for the "Future Planetary Exploration" blog site. China's plans for a 2016 Orbiter and EDL Demo are highlighted.
Here is the link -
http://futureplanets.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-next-four-mars-landers.html The post also contains an update on the Russian 2018 Mars Lander that will deliver ESA's ExoMars rover.
As for China, I hope that they will follow the lead of their unmanned program, focusing their manned spaceflight effort towards the Moon and Mars. They need to avoid the trap of Low Earth Orbit that has snared the rest of the world's manned space programs. In that regard, it is interesting to note that China will fly what one might call Chang'e-2.5 in the year 2015. It will test the design of Chang'e-5's sample-return entry capsule at lunar return velocity, and will utilize the Chang'e-2 design for the spacecraft bus. What they should do is follow that up with a test of a lunar version of the Shenzhou capsule, much like the Soviet Zond/Soyuz program.
There was a paper yesterday at the Asia-Oceania Geoscience Society (AOGS) Conference in Brisbane yesterday where a paper was presented on a 2018 orbiter-lander missions. The proposed orbit is high inclination and highly elliptical, the paper was mostly about the dynamics.
The abstract is number 6 on this link,
http://asiaoceania.org/aogs2013/mars2/pubViewAbs.asp?sMode=oral§ionIdO=6&dayRank=5&submit=Browse+Abstracts, by Cheng-Li Huang and Zhizhou He.
I asked about the lander afterwards, it's stationary apparently, not a rover, at least at this stage.
Looks like the Chinese are pressing on to fly something to Mars in 2018 - and it may be more ambitious than many here has imagined!
Someone first leaked out news that the proposed Mars mission has passed critical reviews for launch in 2018, and it is "far more ambitious than he has imagined".
Then in a lecture by a radio astronomy scientist working at the radio telescope in Shanghai it was revealed that the original Mars exploration schedule has been compressed, such that the Chinese are flying an orbiter and a rover (yes, rover!) to Mars at the same time in 2018. Let's see if there's official information soon.....
Looks like the Chinese are pressing on to fly something to Mars in 2018 - and it may be more ambitious than many here has imagined!
Someone first leaked out news that the proposed Mars mission has passed critical reviews for launch in 2018, and it is "far more ambitious than he has imagined". Then in a lecture by a radio astronomy scientist working at the radio telescope in Shanghai it was revealed that the original Mars exploration schedule has been compressed, such that the Chinese are flying an orbiter and a rover (yes, rover!) to Mars at the same time in 2018. Let's see if there's official information soon.....
Would it be possibly to adapt their Lunar rovers for Martian use?